This week was my first time to be at Food for Life since before Christmas. Just after Christmas Paul and I went on a skiing vacation, and the day after we got home I started feeling quite poorly. Much to our surprise, Paul and I discovered that this feeling that was unfamiliar was pregnancy. Needless to say, from day one I had severe nausea every day, 24 hours a day, for the first tri-mester, and then sporadic nausea and lots of fatigue until my fifth month. I am thankful to have been feeling better for over two weeks now, and it was so nice to actually feel well enough to go with him to Food for Life. So many sweet people from Food for Life and church were praying for me, which meant so much to me.
It was amazing to me how many new faces I saw. So many of the faces I was expecting to see were not there, and so many new faces that I didn't recognize seemed to have taken their places. It reminded me of how transient homeless people are.
I was just telling someone this weekend about how we may have anywhere from 50 to 100homeless people on any given Tuesday night, but far more than that cross our paths in any given year. This is because so many of them will travel, sometimes out of town to go see family, but since Greenville is the place they call home, they will come back in a week or two. Then there are those who just enjoy roaming around the Greenville area. There are people that Paul has been getting to know since Food for Life began several years ago, but months go by in between some of the their visits because they have made their way to the other side of Greenville and were living over there for a while. Because of that, if a person who is trying to minister to this transient homeless community, he or she will have to be dedicated to coming every week to volunteer because it may take many Tuesdays of being available to build relationships. We have been blessed with just such dedicated volunteers, who really are in it for the long haul to build relationships with our hit or miss homeless guests. Please pray that God will continue to send men who desire to mentor these homeless men who need guidance in so many areas of their lives.
We were also blessed to have Ross and Spencer Robinson with us this week. Spencer had a school project that required him to "walk a mile" in someone else's shoes, and he chose Paul. Paul enjoyed so much the time that he spent with Spencer, an eleven-year-old with a very apparent promising perspective on life. As part of this project, Spencer was able to shadow Paul at work and at Food for Life. Paul was so pleased to have spent this time with him.
We were pleased to serve 125 plates this week and had around 20 volunteers.
~Charity
